The Wall—Before and After
On November 9, 2009, many places will celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the
Berlin Wall. To people who grew up with a Europe that was divided by the invisible, but ever-present
Iron Curtain, it was a moment that they had not really expected to ever witness. In January of 1989, the
head of the East German government, Erich Honecker, had still confidently proclaimed that the Wall
would still be there 50, and even 100 years later. It was a fact of life, just as communism was a fact of
life for the people of the German Democratic Repbulic, and no one really expected circumstances to
change. But they did. Almost out of the blue, East Germany opened its borders to the West on
November 9, 1989, and changed the lives of millions of people on both sides in the course of a few
short hours. Family members who had not seen each other in decades were reunited. East Germans
streamed across the border to get a first-hand look at the nirvana they expected to find in West Berlin.
It was, literally, as if a dark, menacing curtain had been lifted from all of eastern Europe. It was a day
that changed history, and yet, just twenty short years later, young people, even in Germany, don’t know
much about this momentous occasion anymore. What sets us apart as a race is the fact that, collectively,
we have the ability to learn from our past mistakes and pass that knowledge on to future generations.
But how can we learn if, after twenty years, we have already forgotten? So here’s a quick primer to get
you up to speed with a couple of movies that put into perspective the before and after of that horrendous
death trap that everyone simply referred to as “The Wall.”
The "Before" Picture: Sonnenallee (1999).
Based on the book “Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee” von Thomas Brussig, the movie affords a
glimpse into the lives of five East German teenagers growing up on Sonnenallee, a street that was divided
into two uneven stretches by the Berlin Wall—the longer end in the West; the shorter end in the East.
Micha, the book’s main protagonist, and his friends grow up during the Cold War “at the shorter end
of the Sonnenallee” in ordinary East German households. Their interests are not very different from
those of the kids living on the other side of the ominous Wall: mostly, they like rock'n roll and girls.
Thomas Brussig, the author of the book, grew up in East Berlin himself and generally depicts the East
German lifestyle quite accurately, although definitely with a humorous slant. It is an amazing event, for
example, when Micha’s family, after many years of waiting, finally receives a telephone and when it rings,
they all stare at it with a mix of wonder and apprehension as if they half expect a secret service agent to
jump out of it. But Micha and his family live in the shadows of the everpresent Wall, right around the corner
from a border crossing. They have some limited contact with the West because Micha’s uncle, who lives
in the West, comes to visit frequently, and sightseers in West Berlin like to ridicule the “Ossis” from a
viewing platform on the West side. Both the book and the movie contain many humorous details and
aim to portray the lighter side of life in the East, as opposed to many of the more serious movies dedicated
to the oppressive nature of the communist regime (e.g. "The Lives of Others"). In spite of the comedic and
somewhat nostalgic angle of the movie, viewers still get an idea of the restrictions and conformity that
ruled the lives of East Germans for nearly forty-five years.
And the Wall Came Tumbling Down (9 November 1989)
The "After" Picture: Good Bye Lenin (2003).
How did life change for East Germans after the Wall came down and the big party was over?
It wasn’t all just a bed of roses, and many people found it difficult to adjust to the abundance and the
freedom the West had to offer. The movie “Good Bye Lenin” again takes a somewhat humorous
approach to the subject, but viewers still get the idea that not only bad things disappeared with the old
regime, but a sense of identity and familiarity as well. In October of 1989, Alex Kerner, the main
character of the movie, is arrested during an anti-government rally, which causes his mother, Christiane,
a flag-waving party member, to have a heart attack and go into a coma. A month later, Christiane,
still in a coma, sleeps right through the fall of the Wall. But when she finally wakes up, the doctors fear
that any kind of stress would aggravate her heart condition and kill her. Out of love for his mother, Alex
recreates the German Democratic Republic in their tiny apartment, all the way down to fake TV news
programs he records with the help of his best friend. Alex goes to extreme lengths to perpetuate their
previous lifestyle and to find his mother’s favorite foods, which are no longer available in stores. Of
course, the lie, in the end, is doomed to fail, but not before Alex learns the truth about his father, who
had fled to the West twenty years earlier, and discovers that his mother is not nearly as staunch a
supporter of the communist regime as he had thought. Some of the most interesting scenes in “Good Bye
Lenin” highlight the cultural and economic contrasts between the two sides of Berlin, an East Berlin that
had no access to Coca Cola before reunification and a West Berlin full of glimmering stores and dubious
morals. Many of the problems that arose as a result of these contrasts are only hinted at in the movie, but
the divide between “Ossis” (East Germans) and “Wessis” (West Germans) persisted for years after
reunification and is not 100 percent resolved even twenty years after the fall of the Wall.
Resources for "Sonnenallee": Movie website; the Easy Reader version of "Am
kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee" is hard to come by in the US, but may be available
used through Amazon.com.
The movie is not available in English, but can be purchased in German with Region 2
code (Germany) from Amazon.de.